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She was a beautiful ship, in the frigate class, fashioned, notmerely in her lines, but in her details, with an extreme of thatloving care that Spanish builders not infrequently bestowed. Shehad been named, as if to blend piety with loyalty, the San Felipe,and she had been equipped with a fastidiousness to match the beautyof her lines.

The great cabin, flooded with sunlight from the tall stern windowsof horn, which now stood open above the creaming wake, had beenmade luxurious by richly carved furnishings, by hangings of greendamask and by the gilded scrollwork of the bulkheads. Here PeterBlood, her present owner, bending over the Spaniard who reclined ona day bed by the stern locker, was reverting for the moment to hisoriginal trade of surgery. His hands, as strong as they wereshapely, and by deftness rendered as delicate of touch as awoman’s, had renewed the dressing of the Spaniard’s thigh, wherethe fractured bone had pierced the flesh. He made now a finaladjustment of the strappings that held the splint in place, stoodup, and by a nod dismissed the negro steward who had been hisacolyte.

‘It is very well, Don Ilario.’ He spoke quietly in a Spanish thatwas fluent and even graceful. ‘I can now give you my word that youwill walk on your two legs again.’

A wan smile dispelled some of the shadows from the hollows whichsuffering had dug in the patient’s patrician countenance. ‘Forthat,’ he said, ‘the thanks to God and you. A miracle.’

‘No miracle at all. Just surgery.’

‘Ah! But the surgeon, then? That is the miracle. Will menbelieve me when I say I was made whole again by Captain Blood?’

The Captain, tall and lithe, was in the act of rolling down thesleeves of his fine cambric shirt. Eyes startlingly blue underblack eyebrows, in a hawk-face tanned to the colour of mahogany,gravely considered the Spaniard.

‘Once a surgeon, always a surgeon,’ he said, as if by way ofexplanation. ‘And I was a surgeon once, as you may have heard.’

‘As I have discovered for myself, to my profit. But by what queeralchemy of Fate does a surgeon become a buccaneer?’

Captain Blood smiled reflectively. ‘My troubles came upon me fromconsidering only—as in your case—a surgeon’s duty; from beholdingin a wounded man a patient, without concern for how he came by hiswounds. He was a poor rebel who had been out with the Duke ofMonmouth. Who comforts a rebel is himself a rebel. So runs thelaw among Christian men. I was taken red-handed in the abominableact of dressing his wounds, and for that I was sentenced to death.The penalty was commuted, not from mercy. Slaves were needed inthe plantations. With a shipload of other wretches, I was carriedoverseas to be sold in Barbados. I escaped, and I think I musthave died at somewhere about the time that Captain Blood came tolife. But the ghost of the surgeon still walks in the body of thebuccaneer, as you have found, Don Ilario.’